Narrow Escape Read online

  NARROW ESCAPE

  Marie Browne

  “Oh, you live on a boat? That must be really cold in the winter...” Or, “Oh, you live on a boat? It must be great being so close to nature...” Or, “Oh, you live on a boat? It must be fantastic to be able to go wherever you like, whenever you like...”

  Narrow Escape sets out to dispel these commonly held public myths.

  From how to avoid assassination by ninja stealth ducklings, through definitive proof that kittens are aliens and the best way to sleep at forty-five degrees, to the importance of having the right boating equipment; (a child’s plastic sledge and a never ending supply of cotton wool balls). This month by month account of one family’s liveaboard year takes a firmly tongue in cheek look at what it takes to enjoy the ‘idyllic’ lifestyle.

  For Geoff; my partner in organised lunacy, my rock, my voice of reason and my very best friend.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Introduction

  Over the last five years I have had so many people ask me what it’s really like to live on a narrow boat. Not to travel around getting into various scrapes (our paintwork shows that we’ve had enough of those), but the ins and outs of coping with kids, school runs, work, illness, and all the other bits and pieces that come with twenty-first-century living.

  The first thing everybody says, as soon as they find out where I live is, “Ooo I bet that’s cold in the winter!” It always amazes me; there are so many more ‘issues’ to living on a boat than the temperature.

  This is not a travel book. Unlike Narrow Margins and Narrow Minds we don’t have a new boat, we’re not facing locks and, for once, we aren’t intent on trying to sink ourselves (nature has taken on that job). Narrow Escape is a month by month, tongue in cheek account of living within a restricted space, on a restricted budget, and of our attempts to inject a sense of normality into our children’s lives.

  2012 wasn’t that good for those afloat, especially in Cambridgeshire. The weather was, at times, extreme to say the least. Floods, high winds, snow, unempathic landowners, and panicked wildlife all took their toll this year. I have to admit I hope never to go through another like it.

  Those that already live aboard will recognise many of the adversities that nature tends to throw at those who reside on water. For those that may be thinking of indulging in this lifestyle, don’t panic; I can assure you that this year has been one like no other. Yes, if you choose to live aboard an elderly ‘fixer upper’ with children you may well face every single situation described within its pages. However, I can only hope that you never have to face them all within one twelve month period. Let me say again, this year has been EXCEPTIONAL.

  I hope you enjoy spending a year with our family, friends and all the other elements that make up this odd life of ours.

  Happy boating and don’t forget, pirate coffee costs less than a session with a therapist.

  Marie x

  Chapter One:

  January Brings The Snow. I’m Feeling Like An Eskimo.

  “MUM!”

  I jumped at the shout. Intent on giving our fire desperate CPR, I obviously hadn’t heard my youngest trying to get my attention.

  “What?” I yelled down the boat at him, “I’m a bit busy at the moment.” Ignoring the muttering from behind me I turned back to my sulking log burner. “I can’t believe I made such a damn rookie mistake.” I poked at it and grimaced as my fledgling fire collapsed into a puff of sparks and cinders. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

  “What’s the matter Mum?” Sam, still yawning and dressed in pyjamas, three jumpers, and a lot of socks, had wandered down to see what all the swearing was about.

  I jumped and hit my head on the blackened door of the log burner. “Jaaagghh!” was all I managed.

  Sam winced and took a step back. “That wasn’t my fault,” he said.

  “I never said it was.” I sat on the floor and picked up my morning coffee, it wasn’t very warm but, compared to the temperature in the boat, it was the closest thing I had to a hot water bottle. I stared up at the ceiling. My repeated unsuccessful attempts to light the fire had merely created rolling clouds of smoke that, hovering at ceiling height, effectively sliced the boat in two.

  “I’m freezing.” Sam stared at the cold, black fire for a moment. “Why is the fire out?”

  I stared into my coffee cup and took a deep breath. Although I was fairly sure that screaming and throwing bits of wood around would warm me up, it would be a temporary solution at best. Taking a deep breath, I went back to chopping the wet kindling into the longest and thinnest slivers I could. “It’s out because I didn’t put enough coal on it last night. I was being lazy and didn’t want to go out into the snow for a new bag so I hoped I’d put on enough to make it last.”

  “Never put off till tomorrow what you can mess up today.” Sam solemnly intoned one of my favourite sayings.

  I had to laugh. “Yes, thank you Sam,” I said. “It would be a lot faster if I had some firelighters but I’ve run out of those as well, so maybe I should just concentrate on what I’m doing.” I turned to give him my patent ‘now is not the time for daft questions’ look. Unfortunately, my teeth were chattering so hard I’m fairly sure all he got was a ‘somewhat surprised’ look. He got the message anyway and scarpered.

  Thirty seconds later he was back.

  I sighed and turned again as he poked me in the shoulder. “Sam honey, I can’t do this with you sitting like a monkey on my back …”

  He held his hand out. Curious, I took what he was offering. I was now the proud possessor of a handful of cotton wool balls.

  “Very nice dear.” I put the fluffy balls on the floor and wondered if the cold had finally leeched into his brain, I know I was finding thinking difficult.

  He picked them up and handed them to me again. “Use these instead of firelighters,” he said.

  I stared at them for a moment and then put them down again. “I don’t think so, Sam.” I turned back to the fire.

  “I saw it on telly.” He piled them up into a little pyramid on the carpet. “They were showing you how to light a fire outside. They said that cotton wool was an excellent fire starter.”

  I peered up at him from where I sat on the floor. He didn’t seem to be having a laugh.

  He picked them up and handed them to me with a grin. “Go on, Mum,” he said. “Can we just see what happens?”

  I shrugged. Well, I might as well give it a go, nothing else I’d tried so far had worked and, at the very least, he’d learn that you can’t trust everything you see on the goggle box.

  Sam leant toward me and whispered in my ear. “You can also use erm …” he shuffled and looked around, obviously worried that somehow we had become a magnet for crowds of people eager to move away from their central heating and live in the frozen wastes of Cambridgeshire, “… Those towel things.”

  “Huh?” I had visions of setting fire to my tea towels. Actually, if this didn’t work that might actually be a solution.

  “You know, the ones women use.” He gave me a sage look, raising his eyebrows and nodding at me in an effort to get me to understand without having to use the actual words.

  “Really?” I removed all the charred sticks from the fire bed and dumped the woolly balls in a pile. Carefully covering them in tiny splinters and bits of twig I too
k a deep breath and struck a match. Firmly quashing the temptation to hold my hands over it for a moment I held the flaming piece of wood out toward him. “Do you want to do this, Mr Wilderness Wizz?”

  Sam grinned at me and took the long match. Carefully inserting it through the open door of the log burner he set fire to the pile of cotton wool.

  The fluff went up with a whoosh of blue flame which caused Sam to squeak and throw himself on top of me. Well, that was pretty much what I’d expected; there was no way that was going to burn for long enough to set light to the kindling, I waited for the balls to reduce to ash.

  They didn’t, they kept burning. For a couple of seconds I watched the little fire, too surprised to actually do anything useful. Then, as realisation settled in, I leapt about heaping ever bigger pieces of wood onto the flaming pile. I opened the bottom vent as wide as it would go, closed the door then sat back and thought good fiery thoughts at the whole thing.

  An hour later, the contents of the wood burner were burning so fiercely the metal was almost glowing. And, with the Eco-fan spinning madly, sending waves of lovely warmth down the boat, I finally felt warm enough to start taking some layers off.

  It had been so cold that morning that I’d just thrown on everything I could get my hands on. Wearing pretty much everything you own, while fairly good at keeping you cosy, does sort of label you ‘mad cat woman’ and, with every layer I removed, I half expected to find felines hidden in the folds of clothing.

  Handing Sam a mug of hot chocolate as he stood staring out of the window, I gave him a squeeze. “Good thinking about the cotton balls, Batman.” I nudged him to take it from me. “There’s an extra marshmallow in there.” He took the mug with a smile but continued to stare out of the window, occasionally using his sleeve to wipe away the condensation.

  “Mum, what do crows usually eat?” He absently took a sip, winced at the heat of the drink and then went back to staring out of the window.

  OK, not a question I was expecting. “I don’t know love, all sorts of things I think, why?” I turned back to the cooker and almost fell over our black staffy, Mortimer. Now that the temperature had reached an acceptable level, he had finally deigned to emerge from his nest of blankets in the hope that some marshmallows might end up inside him.

  “Because there’s one dancing outside.” Sam wiped the condensation away with his hand; he merely succeeded in smearing the water across the glass.

  “Um hmmm.” I giggled at Mort who, with three small marshmallows stuck to his teeth, looked like he’d fallen out of the film ‘Deliverance’. I half expected him to pick up a banjo. Finally Sam’s odd statement made it through the haze to my frozen brain. “Sorry, what? I thought you said there’s a dancing crow.”

  Sam nodded.

  Picking up a wodge of kitchen towel I joined him at the window. I used it to clear the vast runnels of condensation that seemed to permanently cloud our view of the white world outside at this time of year.

  Eventually, I managed to peer through the glass. Snow covered everything. At least eight inches deep it blanketed the flood defences and had blown up against our flimsy fence. The same colour as the sky, it created the illusion that you were staring into the abyss.

  The only carbuncle on this vision of winter wonder was the incredible mess that littered the flats outside the boat. I cursed myself. The idea of trudging through the snow with a full bin bag last night had been just too much for me. So, preferring to sit in a lazy heap by the fire, I’d opted for slinging it outside with the intention of taking it down to the skip when I went to get the coal. I’d never gone for coal so, I’d told myself I’d do it first thing in the morning.

  The crow had got there first.

  A chicken carcass, vegetable peelings, tea bags, and all sorts of other unsavoury items were spread over about twenty square foot. The tea bags were gently staining the snow a horrible brown colour and, through the middle of all this, Eric rolled around and around, squawking and hollering in a suitably raucous manner. I had to admit he really did look as though he was break dancing.

  Eric was a crow that Charlie, my daughter, had befriended a couple of years earlier. She had coaxed and cosseted it into taking food from her and it had taken the complaining might of half of the marina to get her to stop feeding the damn thing. He was beautifully behaved when she was around but, as soon as she went to school or turned her back on him for a moment, he would raid the neighbours’ bins and turn the flood defences into a miniature landfill.

  “Eric!” I hammered on the window. “Stop it. Go away!”

  Sam looked up at me with a slightly condescending expression. “I don’t think he’s listening to you, Mum. I don’t think he’s going to listen to anyone until he finishes what he’s doing.”

  “What exactly is he doing?” I peered through the window. I realised that Eric wasn’t dancing, he was struggling with something. Performing the most amazing somersaults, he was screaming and pecking at whatever was beneath his feet. For a couple of seconds he would leap and cavort in and out of the snow, all mad eyes and open beak before disappearing beneath the white again. As we watched, completely dumbfounded at his antics, he flopped onto the snow, his wings outstretched and just lay like a feathered blackberry stain on a christening gown.

  He didn’t move. Sam and I looked at each other.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” That seemed to be my mantra for the morning. I grabbed my coat and began searching for my wellies.

  As I left the boat, Mortimer mincing at my side, it began to snow again. Fat white flakes drifted down attempting to cover the garbage that had turned the flat white of the riverbank into modern art. The river itself was completely frozen over and also covered in snow, much to the consternation of the local swans who had taken themselves off into the fields to await the thaw. If it hadn’t been for the line of boats marking the edge, you couldn’t actually tell where the land stopped and the river began. We were all very careful when we stepped aboard Minerva.

  “Leave it alone.”

  Mortimer, excited by deep frozen chicken had been adding to the mess. He dropped the carcass with a slightly guilty look and, after discolouring his own patch of winter, had tiptoed over to join me. Spying Eric lying in a crumpled heap he began a deep grumbling rumble. Both animals had met before and Mortimer usually came off the worse in their encounters.

  “Oh shush you.” I poked him in the rump. He totally ignored me, advancing stiff legged and fluffed toward the stricken bird.

  “MORT!”

  At my shout he subsided. Eric, warned that the dog was nearby, lifted his head and stared with menace filled black bullet eyes at his hairy nemesis. He opened his huge strong beak and began a rumbling sound of his own.

  Glad that the dog was there to distract the bird, I grabbed the feathered nuisance from behind. Lifting him out of the snow I realised that he had somehow managed to put his foot through some old ribbon. This in turn had become tangled with a length of cling film. He looked like a really badly wrapped Christmas present; presumably something the naughty would find in their stocking if the price of coal carried on rising.

  As I lifted him into the air all hell broke loose. The big crow screamed over and over as he flapped his big wings and stabbed at my face with his beak. I held him at arm’s length and began untangling the mess around his feet, all the while trying to find a way to still his wings. “Sam, SAM!” I yelled at the grinning face I could see through the window. “Get me a towel.”

  Sam rolled his eyes but disappeared into the darkness of the boat. Leaning forward I could see where the ribbon had split, trapping Eric’s foot. Concentrating on the task, I forgot what I was holding and was reminded rather abruptly as Eric’s beak performed a military tattoo across the back of my hand.

  “Ow, you ungrateful little brute,” I yelped as I tried to twist my hand away from the stabbing maw. “I’m trying to do you a favour. Ow, stoppit, OUCH!”

  Mortimer had obviously decided that enough was e
nough. There was no way that smelly bag of feathers was going to attack his mum, so he launched an attack of his own. Twenty-seven kilos of over-indulged Staffordshire bull terrier shot up my leg and, after knocking me onto my back in the snow, landed squarely on my stomach.

  Although being trampled and pecked I was very conscious that the dog must not get at the bird. I held Eric up out of the way as Mort unintentionally pinned me to the ground in an attempt to get to the screaming, flapping monstrosity.

  Into this furore Sam arrived holding a tiny tea towel. Seeing absolutely no way that he could help without getting actively involved, he began flapping the towel indiscriminately at all of us. I swear the noise of dog barking, bird screaming insults, me shouting at the dog to back off and Sam just shouting must have been audible about twenty miles away.

  Of course at this moment, Geoff arrived home. I wish I’d had a video camera as he came over the flood defences, his expression must have been priceless. On the other hand, if he’d had the video camera the footage would probably have been worth a fair amount of money from one of those home movie calamity shows.

  Within thirty seconds my organised and useful husband had grabbed Mort and thrown him into the boat, come back out with a bigger towel, wrapped Eric in a big blue bundle, given me a hand up, and generally restored peace and tranquillity.

  With Mortimer sulking in his basket and Eric lying trussed and furious on the table; my rather disgruntled husband finally had time to say hello. While I made tea he managed to unearth just Eric’s feet from the towel and busied himself unwrapping the ribbon and cling film from around the bird’s long black claws.

  “But why did you let the flaming dog out with you?” he asked.

  As I placed his mug of tea on the table, Eric swivelled his head with horror film precision and glared at me. He would have been fantastic as an extra in any Hitchcock film. Opening his beak he gave me the full view of his little pointed tongue then, with a clack that made me gulp, he snapped it shut and just continued his silent and accusatory stare.